Category Archives: Other News

Lindsey March

Bicester is famous all over the world as the site of the UK’s biggest tourist attraction, Bicester Village. The signs in Japanese that you see in London are to direct visitors there. It offers an immersive shopping experience, designed to help you consume as much fashion as you can manage to pack into your huge suitcase. But it may soon become as synonymous with restrained, sustainable, comfortable but also aware and proud ways of living, made possible in the Bicester Eco-Town, where residents began to move in in 2016. The second phase will have 6,000 homes.

TiK (Transition in Kings) hosted a talk by Nicole Lazarus who told us about Bicester Eco-Town. It follows on BedZED, a development in London which is sustainable and also a successful community, where houses sell for 10-15% above the average local price. She worked on this project and is now the Oxfordshire programme manager for Bioregional, working with a major housing provider and the local council to build the new town, whose first phase has 393 homes, a primary school, a community centre, an eco-pub and an eco-business and retail centre.

Bioregional is the organisation through which these projects are built. It is guided by the idea of ‘One Planet Living’ – seeking to make it easier for ordinary people to live happy, healthy lives within their fair share of the earth’s resources, leaving space for wildlife and wilderness. This idea has ten principles, covering health and happiness, equity and the local economy, culture and community, land use and wildlife, sustainable water, local and sustainable food, sustainable materials, sustainable transport, zero waste and zero carbon. They seek to deliver ambitious but practical products and services, which bring a commercial advantage for partners. http://www.bioregional.co.uk/

All the homes will be built to Code for Sustainable Homes Level 5, incorporating triple glazing, rainwater harvesting and water recycling. Electricity will be generated from PV solar panels on every home. Heat and hot water will come from a combined heat and power plant, and will eventually use heat supplied by an energy-from-waste facility. There will be cycle and pedestrian routes, a bus stop within 400 metres of every home, live timetable updates in each house, charging points for electric vehicles and an electric car club.

As well as building the Eco-Town, Bioregional has delivered a lot of environmental and energy-saving projects to the residents of Bicester itself.

Bioregional constantly checks on what they have built to find whether their ideas have been successful or whether they need to be changed or modified, and communicates this follow-up research widely, so that any mistakes may be avoided by new eco-towns and villages. They work on a policy level, national and international. BedZED was initiated by Bioregional, developed by the Peabody Trust in partnership with Bioregional and designed with architects, ZEDfactory (based in BedZED) and Arup engineers. The homes are all very highly insulated but also well ventilated, using the wind cowls on the roofs. Fresh outside air is drawn into the building and pre-heated by outgoing stale air via heat exchangers. There is a mini district heating system, and a large hot-water tank in each home helps to keep it warm in winter as well as storing hot water.

TiK was very lucky to have heard this very encouraging and inspiring talk from Nicole. She has worked for Bioregional for 20 years and lived in BedZED for ten years. With us, she had a very appreciative audience, but she often speaks to audiences of developers and other business people, who are not necessarily so receptive. Speaking personally, I was very encouraged, while at the same time thinking, ‘Why are developers not required by law to do many of the things that BedZED were demonstrating back in 2002?’ Bioregional estimates that residents of BedZED save about £3,258 a year in transport, water and energy bills. That would be a worthy subject for the talents of the advertising specialists, along with advertisements for the delights of Bicester Village.

John Ingleby – Chair, Transition in Kings

My wife and I went to see the film “Tomorrow” by Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent, and then four days later we saw “TheAge of Consequences” by Jared P Scott. Both films are about climate change, but they couldn’t be more different.

“The Age of Consequences” is one of several films about climate change, including Al Gore’s “An Inconvenient Truth” and others, such as “Years of Living Dangerously” by James Cameron. These films are all well made and lavishly presented, with the theme best described as “Stark Warnings to Humanity”. They graphically illustrate how, if we don’t change our ways, our planet Earth is becoming more dangerous and less habitable.

My problem with “TheAge of Consequences” and similar doom-laden films is that they don’t give any clues about what we could possibly do to avert disaster. After watching pictures of devastation from droughts, storms, melting ice, warming oceans, mass migrations and so-on, the cynic in me begins to notice how parts of the film are actually computer special effects. Small wonder that so many are persuaded this whole issue is a carefully choreographed “hoax”.

So I want to explain why “Tomorrow” is so different from many other films dealing with climate change. To begin with, “Tomorrow” was crowd-funded from the inspiration of Cyril Dion and Mélanie Laurent when their first child was born. Where could they find real-life examples of people and communities today, who are creating practical solutions for a more sustainable, equitable and just way of life?

“Tomorrow” was produced in France, and first shown to wide acclaim at the Paris Conference in December 2015. It took just over a year to add English sub-titles, and the Transition Network (based in Totnes) is arranging UK screenings for a minimal charge of £100 per event. Most of these are being organised by local Transition groups, and shown to small audiences in town and village halls.

The story of Cyril and Mélanie’s journey is different because climate change is rarely mentioned. Instead, their story illustrates the human activities which produce climate change alongside alternative approaches, to show how destruction caused by those activities can be avoided, and even reversed.

Did you know, for example, that while small-scale farming obviously involves much human effort, each acre produces on average five times more food compared with today’s large industrialised farms? Moreover, small-scale farming is better at preserving soil structures and absorbing rain and nutrients. How did we come to accept industrialised agriculture as the natural and inevitable way to produce food, with its demands for ever-growing inputs of water, fertilisers and energy?

The term “permaculture”, meaning permanent (i.e. sustainable) agriculture, describes modern approaches derived from the study of age-old methods of food production. Cyril and Mélanie’s journey shows how permaculture methods are being used to grow food in today’s urban environments.

“Tomorrow” is a positive, affirming and inspirational film, exploring creative solutions in the fields of food, energy, transport, economics and education. In their travels to many different parts of the world, the couple visit permaculture farms, urban agriculture projects, community-owned renewable-energy schemes, local currencies, creative schools, and an ambitious recycling project.

If you search YouTube for “#Tomorrowfilm“, you will see how this film leaves people with a more optimistic and positive outlook for their future. It is opening eyes to new possibilities for our own communities.

Future screenings of “Tomorrow” can be found by Googling “Tomorrow Transition” followed by the town name below. So far, I only know about these dates and places:

Titus Alexander

Foreword

Titus Alexander lives in Kings Langley and was an active participant in TiK during its early days, with a major role in founding Grand Union Community Energy. Titus is committed to making democracy the cornerstone of healthy and sustainable communities. He founded Democracy Matters, the alliance for practical politics education. His book, Practical Politics: Lessons in Power and Democracy (2017), is published by the UCL Institute of Education Press. You can download free extracts from www.practicalpolitics.global.

Churches have always been involved in questions about what makes a good life and therefore politics. Aristotle described the aim of politics as ‘the highest of all goods achievable by action’ and called it the ‘master science’, because politics is about deciding priorities between everything else. The general election was a vivid battle between competing priorities and visions of the good life. But politics are not just about elections.

Churches grapple with their own internal politics, over issues such as the ordination of women, gay marriage, the practicalities of running a parish, the business of church investments, maintaining buildings and vicars’ pensions. Churches have also played an active role in big social issues, such as abolition of slavery, Jubilee 2000 debt campaign, relief of poverty and living-wage campaigns. Some political parties even have confessional origins, notably the Democratic Unionist Party, now in discussions with the Government. It was founded in 1971 as the Protestant Unionist Party by the Reverend Ian Paisley.

Politics affects all areas of our lives, from the state of our roads and price of goods to our climate, health and security. Politics is not just an occasional referendum and election, but a ceaseless process at every level of government, from school governing bodies and parish council to meetings of the World Trade Organisation, NATO and agencies of global governance. Most decisions which affect our daily lives are not taken in Parliament, but in government agencies, local councils or international bodies to which power is delegated.

Modern politics is complicated and difficult, like a multi-level game of chess, involving numerous players, not just political parties. Pressure groups, businesses, trades unions, foreign governments, charities and churches all seek to influence decisions that concern them. The competition for influence is intense and the outcomes unpredictable, but the impact on our lives can be huge.

Pluralistic political education

The impact of political choices and complexity of politics makes it essential to learn how the political system works, understand the issues and develop skills to do politics better.

As a society, we encourage people to learn how to play sport and do business, which are highly competitive activities that create winners and losers. But we are remarkably reluctant to encourage people to learn how to take part in politics, even although its impact on our lives is greater than sport or business.

In this context, faith communities can promote democratic understanding and engagement by:

Creating safe spaces where people can reflect on issues that concern them and affect their neighbourhood as well as the wider world. Churches should not be afraid to promote discussion of big issues that affect people’s lives, such as Brexit, climate change, the plight of refugees and poverty. Churches often host hustings at election times, a vital part of the democratic process, and can create opportunities to discuss issues between elections as well.

Encouraging people to understand how the political system works: Parliament Week every November is an invitation to run events about Parliament at a local level, and the Parliamentary Education and Outreach teams can support educational events throughout the year (search the Parliament website for more information).

Campaigning on issues about which church members feel strongly, following discussion and study of all sides of the argument.

Churches should not take sides between political parties, but there are times when church members need to speak out about issues that reflect their core values. The world has changed for the better because people have acted on things that matter. At one time people were burnt at the stake for heresy, witchcraft or even translating the Bible into English. . Today we see freedom of speech, pluralism and democracy as fundamental values. People can debate differences and campaign for what they believe is best without fear of persecution, because we recognise that democratic politics is essential to improve society at all levels. But for democracy to be effective, everyone needs to know how the system works and have an effective voice. Churches can play a vital role in this.